PJ Library Orlando started off the new year by giving back to our senior community with a donation of 50+ pairs of socks to the residents of Kinneret Apartments. The success of this program was a joint effort in collaboration with the Roth Family JCC’s Richard S. Adler Early Childhood Learning Center, whose K3 & K4 students created beautiful new year cards to accompany the socks. PJ Library’s most successful efforts come from working with local community partners and agencies such as Kinneret and the JCC.
As you know, celebrations for the High Holidays look different this year due to social distancing. Although we were not able to celebrate together, we were able to send families home with PJ Library High Holiday kits. 60 bags were made with 35 picked up at the Roth Family JCC and 25 at the Rosen JCC. These bags went home into the hands of excited children from north to south Orlando. The bags were filled with activity pages, recipes, kid-friendly tashlich ideas, honey sticks and more.
We have seen tremendous growth in the number of PJ Library books that are sent out on a monthly basis over the past few months. In late 2019, PJ Library Orlando switched from a one book per household community to a one book per child community. At that time we were providing 714 families a monthly PJ Library book. In August 2020, we sent PJ Library books to 1,099 children. Over the past month, working with community partners, we enrolled even more children, bringing the total number of children who will receive PJ Library books in Central Florida to 1,530! That’s more than double the number just a year ago.
PJ Library is launching a national parent pilot program, Unplugging for Shabbat. Two of our Orlando parents will join 100 parent leaders from PJ Library communities across the globe to take a deep dive into what author of 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week, Tiffany Shlain and her family, call a “Tech Shabbat”– a simple, free, 21st century version of the ancient Shabbat ritual that has been working wonders for her family for more than ten years. If you’re curious about the power of unplugging, have been thinking of unplugging yourself or just want to hear what the buzz is about, we invite you to join us at 2 pm ET on Tuesday, 9/29 to hear from Tiffany Shlain.
We look forward to growing our PJ Library community, celebrating together and of course, snuggling up and reading in our pjs. Sweet wishes for a happy and healthy 5781!